SRINAGAR: Fresh data placed before the Rajya Sabha reveals a deepening structural crisis in Jammu and Kashmir’s school education system, marked by a sharp increase in the number of government schools with fewer than ten students, rising teacher deployment in such institutions, and a troubling spike in dropout rates at the secondary level.
The Ministry of Education, responding to an unstarred question tabled by Digvijaya Singh and Ranjeet Ranjan, confirmed that States and Union Territories have reported growing numbers of government schools with either zero or extremely low enrolment since 2022-23. While the Ministry did not release the State-wise tables directly in the reply, the datasets available with UDISE+ show significant changes in Jammu and Kashmir’s school landscape over the last five years.
The overall number of government schools in the Union Territory stood at 23,173 in 2021-22. However, this number dropped sharply to 18,785 from 2022-23 onwards, reflecting the administration’s consolidation drive involving school mergers and repurposing of institutions with low enrolment. The Ministry’s reply confirms that States and UTs have been actively closing or merging schools due to low or zero enrolment during the last five years, although no specific numbers were provided in Parliament.
Despite this consolidation, the number of schools with fewer than ten students has increased each year. Jammu and Kashmir reported 798 such schools in 2022-23, 869 in 2023-24, and 997 in 2024-25. Teacher deployment in these low-enrolment institutions also rose from 1,692 to 1,705 and further to 1,778 during the same period, indicating that teacher rationalisation has not kept pace with enrolment decline.
The Ministry reiterated that teacher recruitment, remuneration and deployment fall entirely under the States and UTs, although financial assistance is provided under the Samagra Shiksha scheme to maintain pupil-teacher ratios as mandated under the Right to Education Act.
District-level data further underscores the severity of under-utilised schools in Jammu and Kashmir. Twenty-seven schools in Udhampur, nineteen in Rajouri, eighteen each in Doda and Kishtwar, twelve in Kathua, ten in Jammu, and ten in Shopian recorded zero enrolment. Several of these districts also host large populations of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and minority communities, amplifying concerns about access and equity.
For instance, Rajouri, with nineteen zero-enrolment schools, has more than 55,000 students from Scheduled Tribes. Doda and Kishtwar, each reporting eighteen zero-enrolment schools, also have heavy concentrations of SC and ST children. This suggests that declining enrolment may be affecting already marginalised communities disproportionately.
Compounding the concern is the new dropout data. While primary and upper-primary dropout rates in Jammu and Kashmir improved in 2023-24 and 2024-25, falling to around 1.5 and 3.2 per cent respectively, the secondary dropout rate has surged dramatically. The rate, which stood at 5.96 per cent in 2021-22 and 9 per cent in 2022-23, jumped to 13.4 per cent in 2023-24 and remained critically high at 12.9 per cent in 2024-25. The scale of increase suggests that the secondary-level dropout burden is far greater than the Ministry’s brief reply acknowledges.
Experts believe that rising dropout rates at the secondary stage can significantly inflate the number of low-enrolment schools in the coming years, especially in rural and hilly districts where access constraints remain acute. With nearly one thousand schools already functioning with fewer than ten students, the scale of potential under-utilisation is substantial.
The Ministry noted that audit and annual reports for such schools are the responsibility of the States and UTs, as clarified by the Department of Expenditure in 2016. These are required to be tabled in their respective Assemblies, and reports from UTs without legislatures are placed before Parliament.
Jammu and Kashmir also hosts fifty-five centrally run schools, employing 1,638 teachers and 313 non-teaching staff. None of these schools is operating from rented premises, according to data shared by the Ministry.
The growing gap between the number of schools, enrolments, and teacher deployment—coupled with rising secondary-level dropouts—points to a complex and widening challenge in the Union Territory’s public schooling system. The Ministry’s reliance on broad UDISE+ references without granular disclosure in Parliament has left several critical questions unanswered, particularly around expenditure on zero-enrolment schools and the extent of closures and mergers over the past five years.
However, the data available strongly indicates that Jammu and Kashmir is heading into a period where under-utilised schools will expand and the secondary-level dropout crisis may deepen unless rapid corrective interventions are made.
On the last count, Jammu and Kashmir had 18785 schools with a cumulative enrolment of 1393820 and managed by 94202. By March 2005, Jammu and Kashmir had 2649158 students on rolls across all schools. Of them, 52.61 per cent were enrolled on the government-run schools.
